


Come On Lay With Me (Hidden From the Outside)

by ShadowsLament



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, First Time, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 04:51:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19349842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsLament/pseuds/ShadowsLament
Summary: On those rare occasions the subject of soulmates came up in their house, Reginald Hargreeves reacted with such extreme prejudice that Klaus and Diego knew they had to hide their soul marks after they manifested. They spent the two long years and then some between fifteen and nearly eighteen covering their skin in makeup and extra layers of clothing, covering their everyday lives in lies. Finally, well and truly tired of hiding their bond in stolen moments spent in dark closets, tired of worrying about Reggie finding out and doing god knew what to keep them apart, Klaus and Diego come to the conclusion that it might be time to run.





	Come On Lay With Me (Hidden From the Outside)

Klaus was never allowed across the threshold of his father’s study. None of them were. Not even when summoned. Like prized but muddy-pawed dogs, they were expected to stand at the door. From there, they predicted how they’d be received, what the forecast had in store for them. Determined the temperature by how white Reginald’s knuckles were, bent around his pen. Whether or not they should batten down the hatches, expect words as hard and pelting as hail, by exactly how far over his desk Reggie leaned. When they found their father already standing—waiting—a furious storm was on the horizon, its potential for damage untold.

Under no circumstances were they ever to step foot in the study, which made it the one place no one would consider—Or, no, no, that wasn’t right: Diego would. He’d come looking for Klaus after someone—probably Ben—realized he wasn’t in his room, the library, the kitchen, or petticoats-deep in Mom’s wardrobe. 

By the window, standing in a slanted shaft of moonlight, Klaus turned over his hands. Grime covered them both so completely it looked like he was wearing gloves, with the spiderwebs he hadn’t been able to shake off standing in for thread. On his race back into the mansion, after Pogo had unbolted his prison door, Klaus’ reflection was a spook in its own right, blurring between glass-fronted photographs and mirrors. It hadn’t occurred to him to stop, to wipe off the cemetery dirt streaking his cheeks. The dust that tasted like dry rot, embedded in the cracks chapping his lips. Or the blood clogging his nostrils, dried in the cradle of his Cupid’s bow.

If he had known Reginald planned to move up the date of their annual physical—But he hadn’t, and so he’d kept his shirt on, and accepted the mausoleum as his punishment for glibly mouthing off and refusing to bare his upper body to Pogo’s poking and prodding. 

That same button-up was stiffer for absorbing a bucket-load of chilled sweat, not to mention it was filthy. The material at the bend of his left elbow was no longer white but a shade darker than the grime gloving his hands. Rolling back that sleeve, Klaus ignored the scratches, the ragged half-moon imprints of his nails, intent on the mark—the word—he carried in the crook of his arm.

Diego’s name.

Klaus sighed, seeing the sharp lines and soft curves that composed it. Felt himself incrementally slip back into his own still-chilled skin.

“You shouldn’t be in here.”

His fingers jerking over the folds of his sleeve, Klaus hastily shoved it back down his arm. Buttoned the cuff. He hunched his shoulders before turning around, made his right hand shake against his forearm, forced his fingers to react to a withdrawal itch he didn’t feel. “Daddy dearest isn’t in residence just now, Luther.”

“So? The rule stands in his absence.” Luther aborted a step forward, hung up on the threshold. “Where have you been anyway? Is that—Did someone hit you?”

“Oh, it was only a little love tap.” Klaus had recoiled too quickly from a ghost leering at him with equal parts blood and tobacco stains on his teeth; his nose kissed the crypt’s cement wall, came away from the unexpectedly intimate encounter aching. Dripping. “A reminder to count all my pennies, make sure I have enough, you know, before I take the pills off my dealer’s hands.”

“And the rest of it?” Looking over the sooty stains on Klaus’ shirt collar and shorts, on his face and throat, Luther’s mouth pursed like he could also taste the mausoleum’s muck. As though perhaps he, too, wondered if he’d unknowingly swallowed a spider or beetle after shoving a hand in his mouth, an ineffectual muffle for the wails welling heavily on his tongue. “Did you pull yourself out of a dumpster before or after the love tap?”

Wandering over to their father’s desk, Klaus lifted a stuffed spitting lizard from its all-wrong habitat, his lips twitching when Luther’s hands came up, his brother seemingly torn between obeying orders and making sure Klaus didn’t soil another one of Reginald’s ridiculous possessions. “Funny you should say that, I—“

“What’s the runt of the litter done now?”

Luther swayed like a rattled cage before he bit out, “This doesn’t concern you, Diego.” Unlike Klaus, he didn’t react to the burning red bruise riding the ridge of Diego’s cheekbone, too concerned with staring their brother down. It was a stupid, futile contest—Diego never flinched or blinked, never looked away first—a fact Luther knew well enough and always chose to ignore. “I’ve got a handle on—“

“That right?” With a shoulder propped against the doorjamb, Diego looked up the few inches Luther had gained on the rest of them, his battered profile on full display to Klaus’ clinging stare. “Then I guess you don’t need me to tell you dad’s Wraith rolled in a minute ago.”

Luther’s eyes flared wide and flashed back into the room. He snapped, “Put that down,” and pointed to the lizard Klaus still dumbly held. “Get back to your rooms, or…I don’t care where, just go someplace else.”

Klaus saluted Luther with the lizard’s polished tail. “Aye aye, captain.”

Departing on a huff, Luther’s footsteps flooded the hall before the sound receded, dropping the study into silence. Klaus replaced the lizard, keenly aware of Diego’s dark eyes and the path they took from the patch of blood on Klaus’ face to the hatch mark abrasions on both his knees. 

When Klaus finally stopped fiddling with the bits and bobs on the desk and looked his way, Diego held out his hand.

The breath Klaus released when their fingers enfolded shivered with pleasure. Resonated with relief.

He let Diego quickly tow him in the direction of a tucked away closet masquerading as a forever-guestless bathroom. Inside, they shuffled their feet to find positions they could comfortably hold for longer than the minute or two it would take the old clawfoot sink to sputter out hot water. Each move they made, slight and contained as they were, stirred the scent of stale flowers, forgotten potpourri in a cut crystal dish on the toilet tank’s ceramic lid. 

Wetting a hand towel, Diego steadied Klaus’ chin with a folded knuckle and his thumb, and gently dabbed at the blood staining Klaus’ nostrils. “How’d it really happen?”

Klaus whispered three fingertips over Diego’s cheekbone, the bruise. “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

“Paperweight.”

For a moment Klaus remained quiet, trying to imagine what Diego must have said to provoke Reginald into throwing an uncharacteristic, unplanned temper tantrum. When the towel stilled against his temple, Klaus blinked Diego’s frown into focus, reflexively offered, “Mausoleum.”

His jaw held tight by tension, Diego nodded. Got back to the task of soothing the cloth over Klaus’ face, softly stripping away its coat of blood and grime.

The other Hargreeves wouldn’t think the same hands that casually flipped and rolled knives with inhuman speed, that beat a heavy bag until the leather hissed and split, capable of taking such exquisite care, wouldn’t give Diego that kind of credit, but Klaus tipped his head into Diego’s unquestionably tender touch and closed his eyes. “Guess I need to stash makeup in every nook and cranny of this place, huh?”

“I ran out last week.”

Klaus cracked one eye open. “Why didn’t you say—“

“That last time you almost got caught with the stuff in your—“

“ _Almost_. But I didn’t, did I, and I’ll be more careful about it next time. Only steal the cheap brands no one would bat an eye at losing.” Klaus gripped Diego’s biceps. “You _have_ to tell me when you need more, Diego. I have to—We need it, we can’t—“

“I know that, okay, I know we do.” Diego’s hand came up to his own chest. The heel of his palm pressed beneath his heart, unmoved by its strong beat, while his fingers curled, forming a shield over the word—Klaus’ name—boldly scrawled across the gorgeous skin Diego hid beneath layers of cotton and wool. “It shouldn’t be you every time. I could—“

“No.” Klaus shook his head, and smiled, eyes roaming over Diego’s face, worshiping every feature from the short distance granted to them by the bathroom’s small dimensions. “Look at you, you’re the living embodiment of distraction. You’ll simply have to resign yourself to the role.”

Diego’s smile was one-sided, the bruise taking the brunt of a light blush. “When are you gonna admit you actually hate listening to me flirt with the women at the register?”

Over the previous two years, the fires Mom tended to in the library had been fed countless phone numbers, little scraps of paper Diego didn’t hesitate to hand over once they were on the sidewalk, unhurriedly making their way back to the Academy. Even if they were allowed near the phone, Diego wouldn’t have made good on the promise of those numbers, Klaus had reason to know the thought never crossed his mind, but—“You remember when the convenience store clerk offered me a ride on his—“ 

A growl rolled over Klaus’ question, sliced straight through the next bit he’d planned to say. Puberty had left Diego with an embarrassment of gifts, including a voice that pitched lower, deeper, that stroked Klaus’ senses and had more than once done the work of a snug hand around Klaus’ dick, working him up to a hardness the uninspired polyester shorts they were made to wear inevitably failed to hide. 

“That pervert wouldn’t have kept the hand he laid on you.”

And that…It wasn’t an idle threat. Diego maintained a training schedule that surpassed rigorous, for one, and all those hours paired with his unnatural skill set, well—Klaus didn’t pause to consider why the thought of Diego’s lethal edge made him shiver in a way that didn’t so much as glance at fear or disgust, that in fact only made him want to get closer, to bare his own teeth. “We’ll get more makeup,” Klaus said, quietly, “and hope Reggie doesn’t spring another surprise inspection on us in the meantime.”

“If we can get through the rest of the weekend,” Diego leaned in, matched Klaus’ soft volume, “I heard him tell Pogo he’ll be gone for a few days. Out of state.”

“What? Really?” Klaus pulled back enough to see the heat that had kindled in the dark of Diego’s eyes. “Shit, you mean we might finally be able to—“

“Yeah.” Maybe Diego wasn’t aware of how he held Klaus’ hips, how he used that firm grip to urge Klaus up, up to balance on the lip of the sink. But he had to know—god, how could Diego possibly not know—how thoroughly it wrecked the rhythm of Klaus’ pulse when he moved between legs so willing to part for him. “If you want to.” Lowering his head, Diego grazed Klaus’ throat with his teeth. “We don’t have to. I can wait a little longer, do what we’ve been doing, if you’re not—“

“Ready?” Klaus laughed, a heady release of air, then groaned. Bared the length of his throat to Diego’s constellated, open-mouthed kisses. “Fuck, Diego,” he rasped, turning his head to find Diego’s skin with his lips, “you know exactly how goddamn long I’ve wanted to feel you inside me.”

Diego’s hips jerked forward, hard, unseating Klaus from his perch, but his hands were still there, kneading the tight strap of muscle over Klaus’ hipbones, and they made short work of resettling Klaus on his makeshift chair. “Yo-you’re sure, baby?”

“How many condoms should I—Never mind,” Klaus waved away the question, stole a searing kiss from the corner of Diego’s lips, “I’ll take whatever they’ve got.” The two shirts Diego religiously wore stretched to accept Klaus’ restless hands, the tank’s softer cotton sticking to his abused knuckles, the peaks he’d scraped raw against the mausoleum’s stone floor. Honed muscles shifted, flexed, a play of strength Klaus showed his appreciation for with roughly bitten nails, the score of scratches down Diego’s back. “Are _you_ sure? You really want to do this with me? You know there’s no going back once we—“

“There never was, Klaus, not for us.”

Klaus shifted until the faucet’s arched spout poked his spine, tried to read between the lines of arousal written around Diego’s eyes, his mouth. “That makes it sound like—“ 

It took a precious second to translate the warning communicated by Diego’s fingers, biting deep and sharp into Klaus’ hips; another second for his body to react, going as still and rigid as Diego held himself. Breath suspended, they both listened to the footsteps coming steadily closer…slowing…stopping in front of the door.

A knock sounded from the vicinity of the doorknob.

Clamping a hand over Diego’s open mouth, Klaus slurred, “Be out…in a…a t-tick.”

Pogo’s sigh slid through the crack beneath the door. “Are you all right, Master Klaus? Do you require assistance?”

Klaus turned his eyes up to the ceiling and, glaring at the bright light fixture that must’ve given them away, produced a hiccuping giggle. Not his best effort, but—“N-no, _siree_ ,” he said, pulling a pitch from the higher end of his range, one that never failed to visibly set Luther’s—and Reginald’s—teeth on edge, “I’m fan…fantas…a-okay, as they say.”

“Should that change—“

Counting on Diego to keep him from pitching sideways into a collision with yet another wall, Klaus extended a leg towards the toilet, caught the lever with the scuffed toe of his shoe. Whatever else Pogo said was lost to the resultant hurricane flush, the ancient plumbing in that section of the mansion taking twice as long to do its work. Twisting at the waist, opening the tap, Klaus awkwardly filled his cupped hands with frigid water he then loudly gargled. 

“S’all good…all good in here, P-pongo.”

His next put-on drunken giggle was partially muffled by the swipe of Diego’s thumb through the water spilled down Klaus’ chin. The slick trail Diego drew across the wallpaper colored pink roses darker. Made flat petals glisten like flushed skin wearing saliva or semen. _Sweet fucking_ —Klaus pulled his gaze away from a thick bud, the bead of water clinging to its curved tip, and in a hoarse voice said, ”What…no…s’not...not it…Pongo’s…Oh, hey. You ever s-seen a Dal-dal—dog, Pogogo?" 

“Once or twice.” Abruptly released, the decorative brass doorknob jiggled. “Clean yourself up and make your way to your room. Quickly, if you would, Master Klaus.”

“Okie dokie.”

As Pogo’s footsteps retreated, Klaus dropped his head to the inner curve of Diego’s shoulder, felt the murmuring vibration of that sinful voice against his cheek. “You gotta let me take the hit sometimes.”

“I haven’t been cultivating my status as the family fuck-up to let it languish, Diego.” Sudden exhaustion weighted Klaus’ shoulders, made the hands he’d braced on the sink slightly shake. “Give me a second and another kiss and I’ll go. You should—”

“Wait another five,” Diego said. “I got the routine down after the first time we ran it.”

The pathetic truth of the matter was, after two years of sneaking around, they were more familiar with the interior of the mansion’s orphaned laundry room than they were with any one of their sibling’s bedrooms. They used a bastardized version of echolocation to find each other in the basement, cramped with cloth-covered stags and wild boars, locked cabinets and desks supposedly used by Melville, Hemingway, a league of writers Reggie admired, just not enough to put their former possessions on display in the same way he showed off his adopted children. 

For the midnight-drenched coat closets they met in, Klaus pocketed every lighter he came across, and Diego hoarded matches, half-empty boxes and long red-tipped lucifers. They thieved as many moments as they reasonably could and, when no other option was open to them, made due in the dark, in confined spaces that rattled Klaus’ heartbeat, that stoppered the breath in his lungs, right up until they were both on their knees and Diego’s mouth was on his, barring from Klaus' mind any thought that didn’t solely contain him.

Even before their marks manifested, Diego had been the only thing that made Klaus’ ghosts fuck off, his voice the only sound that silenced the echo of their demands and deadened laments. 

“Right. So, here I go.” Klaus tiredly slid off the sink and into Diego's arms. “Hopping to, as you can see."

Diego's hold tightened before he let go, shuffled to the side. "Be—"

"Careful, and quiet." It was enough to take with him into sleep, the bare brush of lips Klaus allowed himself. Enough to ensure his dreams were far from sweet, that he'd wake up beneath a sheet of sticky sweat, pulse pounding and so fucking hard, his first thought tangled around Diego's body. "Night, Diego."

He hadn't quite made it through the door when Diego softly responded with, "Bright and early, baby," and it was just the tiniest bit absurd how fast the craving crept through Klaus' veins, the absolute need for that first touch of their hands beneath the breakfast table.

Unwilling to let Diego wait in the bathroom any longer than necessary, Klaus hurried through room after room doing his best to ignore the shadows waltzing across his periphery and the unfamiliar voices trailing him up the stairs. Inside his glacially cold bedroom, without bothering to turn on a light, Klaus shucked off his dirty uniform, pulled on a pilfered pair of Diego's pajama pants. A long sleeve shirt that, for whatever reason, smelled like sugar, like cotton candy. 

Sprawled across the narrow mattress, the pillow a thin cluster of down feathers beneath his head, Klaus kept his eyes open while he waited. When it came, the knock on the wall between his bedroom and Diego's was light, almost inaudible. 

Reassured, knowing that Diego had made it back to his own room undetected, Klaus closed his eyes, curved the pillow around his ears, and let go of consciousness.

* * *

Diego had slept like shit. 

After an hour of laying on his left side, his face shoved up hard against a lumpy pillow, the throbbing all along his cheekbone wouldn't quit. Hot to the touch, his skin spit out pinpricks of blood where the paperweight had shaved off a layer or two. One look at the pillowcase, dotted in deep red, was great for jump starting his memory. For forcing him to relive every desperate second of the twenty minutes or so he'd spent snarling at Pogo, refusing to take his shirt off for the stethoscope's cold bite, the battery of tests Reginald ordered.

Never mind the long stretch after, when he couldn't get to Klaus, wasn't able to warn him. 

He fell back asleep, eventually, but the nightmare that followed him down was so vivid, so intense, he woke himself up choking on a shout or a scream, some sound that was half fury, half white-hot agony. 

Klaus and him, they didn't need makeup to cover their marks, they needed to get out of the fucking Academy and away from their so-called father once and for all.

"For god's sake, Klaus, watch what you're doing."

"It's not his fault, Luther."

At the opposite end of the table, Vanya tried to help Klaus sop up a stream of orange juice flowing freely between them. The thing holding her hair back, it was a result of Mom's handiwork, another attempt to provide in the aftermath of their dad's ambivalent neglect, but Diego figured Vanya probably wouldn't thank her for it, not if she knew how the navy blue band left her expression uncovered. It shouldn't have been possible for their sister to look even more pale and drawn than usual, but there she was.

Righting her pulp-streaked glass, Vanya admitted, "I was the one not paying attention." 

"If he wasn't coming down from—“

Allison touched Luther's wrist. "He doesn't look—"

“ _He_ is right here," Klaus interjected, sharp as a wasp's sting, "and if I might make a suggestion—"

"Save it," Diego said, darting a dark glance at the foyer, effectively shifting Klaus' searching focus from him to the doorway, where the ring of Reginald's incoming polished patent leather footsteps came through loud and clear.

Just like that, stress lines capped Klaus' eyes, had Diego looking for a reason, one he found neatly folded on his plate. Leaving the napkin on his lap, he reached over beneath the table, palmed Klaus' slim thigh. Pressed a promise against the pleated polyester there. As quickly as he did that, he replaced both hands—up and open—on the table for Reginald's inspection. Four weeks after losing the _privilege_ of using a knife on his food, dear old dad still made certain Diego was without one at the table. Even the communal butter knife was off limits to him, a rule revealed only after Klaus broke it. 

Hours after that miserable dinner had ended, on their knees in a stuffy third floor closet, Diego had brushed his lips in silent apology over the fresh welts Klaus wore on both hands. 

He'd slept like shit that night, too.

"Children." Cold. Brisk. Said as Reginald took his seat without looking at any one of them. "You may begin."

Empty plates were swapped out for others divided into food groups, the same four quarters from the old charts Mom showed them when they were younger and Five was still around to scoff at the primary colors, the rudimentary drawings of blonde kids happy to have an apple or banana in hand. Luther took the idea of a balanced meal to heart, thinking it a lesson handed down from dad, while Klaus chucked it out the window first chance he got, grazing on whatever he assumed would piss off Reginald the most. Sugar, usually, in the from of stolen candy bars, cookies, containers of frosting.

Right then he scraped a thumbnail over the dry toast Mom gave him, openly staring at the newspaper their father skimmed, same as every other morning. Slanted away from Diego, the front page headline managed the impossible, curling up a corner of Reginald's thin lips.

"An investment opportunity has presented itself," he said in a tone that twisted Diego's stomach, that made even Luther frown. "I believe the return will far exceed the cost, should I be convinced of the project's viability."

The paper set aside, he continued, "To that end, I will be absent for no more than three days come Monday morning. I expect you all to comport yourselves as you would were I present.”

"Of course, father." Luther hesitated. "What is the project?"

"Nothing to concern yourself with, Number One." Half of a grapefruit wobbled on the plate Reginald took up, jarring the silver spoon beside it. "I will return on the hour with your assignments."

Ben tugged the abandoned newspaper closer, scanned the article beneath the headline. Black lashes lifted as he shot a quick glance at Klaus, fell when he went back to reading. "It's about soulmates and their bonds," he said. "An experimentalist in Lyon believes she's found a way to break them."

Reading over Ben's shoulder, Allison added, "She's looking for backers. And for soulmates willing to enroll in the study."

"Willing to be severed from each other," Ben clarified. "This is—"

"A hoax." Klaus bit along his thumbnail, bouncing one leg beneath the table. "Right? I mean, it has to be." 

Sunlight splintered around Diego’s shoulders, washed the curve of his plate, the tablecloth, in pale yellow. His knuckles looked almost jaundiced in that light; the skin scraped, split into fault lines after a gloveless, hour-long conversation with the heavy bag, the brief dialogue that followed with the gym’s brick wall. He folded his hand, those knuckles, meanly. Glared at the newspaper until Ben slid it across, and Diego found the interior page the headline article cut over to.

Klaus leaned into his side. They read in silence, together.

There wasn’t a single book about soulmates in the library or in their father’s study, not one in the entire goddamn place. The topic had come up once, years before his and Klaus’ marks appeared, and was shut down by Reginald whiplash-fast, with Five receiving a rare slap on the wrist for asking the question. What Diego knew about soulmates he’d had to pickpocket from unsuspecting people they met in passing. Or from lip-reading, paying close attention to news anchors framed by store windows, every television set tagged for sale tuned into the same broadcast, the same documentary. It wasn’t possible to keep up with the research, whatever new aspect of the phenomenon had been uncovered, not that way.

They were allowed out of the house on their own only a couple times a week, for fuck’s sake, with their routes usually predetermined.

A short, wounded noise—and Klaus’ long fingers on his knee, squeezing—pulled Diego’s attention away from columns of tidy black type. From words—consummation, shared experiences, telepathy—he’d barely begun to process.

“I’m not feeling—I’m going to—“ Klaus’ chair abruptly skittered back. He slapped a hand over his mouth, an arm across his stomach, and stumbled around the table. 

Luther watched Klaus’ graceless exit, disgust a heavy mask slipping lower on his face. “I should tell—“

“Stop talking,” Ben said and looked up from Diego’s hand, clenching the newspaper so hard the sheets buckled, the corners quivering, stirring up dust motes. Smart as he was, Ben rightly interpreted the muscle ticking at Diego’s jaw as cause for concern, a precursor to violence. With his quiet eyes open wide and his head tipped in the direction of the door Klaus had used, Ben mouthed, _Go_. To the rest of their siblings he said, “I found another one of Five’s—“

Diego tossed his napkin on the table. Followed Klaus’ path out of the room.

The number of places Klaus could have tucked himself up in—Just the week before last they’d found another small, stashed away space, and hadn’t thought twice about contorting themselves or fumbling into awkward positions to make use of the privacy it temporarily provided. Instinct—or maybe some invisible tether strung between them; after that article, he wasn’t going to rule it out—had Diego peeling off towards the same bathroom they’d used the night before. 

His barely there knock was met with silence. “Ba—“

The door opened, a hand shot out, fingers latching on to the multiple layers covering Diego’s chest. 

Klaus tugged like Diego hadn’t planned to follow him inside and let himself be crowded against the sink. Over Klaus’ shoulder, in the tarnished mirror, their reflections were dim outlines. Through that soft focus Diego watched his arms wrap tight around Klaus, watched Klaus fold in, put his mouth to the pulse in Diego’s throat.

A tremble moved up from Klaus’ hands to his shoulders. His voice, though, that was steady. Diego was positive he’d never heard him sound as certain. “I wouldn’t survive it.”

“What?”

“Being…severed. From you.”

Not about to go there, not even in his thoughts, Diego shook his head. “Never gonna happen.”

“But—“

“Klaus,” Diego shifted to find and hold luminous green eyes, “I’d kill him first.”

Their marks were as good as vows: unvoiced, maybe, but irrevocable. The thing was, the lines Diego carried close on his chest, that Klaus sheltered in the crook of his arm, they'd never stopped them from exchanging others. Promises made by match flame, behind the courtyard's birch trees, over the fridge door. Conveyed in whispers and quick words, offered up in the well of their palms and on the tips of their fingers. Every kiss they'd ever stolen was a vow, as far as Diego was concerned, including those tentative first few they'd went for years before the marks manifested to prove what they already knew.

The way Klaus stared solemnly back at him right then, he understood. Recognized what he'd heard for what it was: a vow. "Not alone, you won't."

Diego accepted that with a nod, with the brush of his rough knuckles across Klaus' cool cheek. "You got to the part in the article that said—"

"If we _consummate_ our bond we'll be able to talk to each other in our minds? That once we go there, _if_ we go there, I'll feel your pain and you'll feel mine? Oh, I got to it all right."

"Those things _might_ happen. It was reported in, what, only two out of five cases?" Diego narrowed his eyes. “ _If_ we go there? What happened to—"

"You said you'd wait." Klaus ducked his head, folded one finger into the cloth covering Diego's elbow. "If I wasn't, you know, ready."

Frowning, aware of his heartbeat falling out of rhythm—of the sudden painful clench of his abdominal muscles—Diego said, "You were ready last night."

"And besides," Klaus continued as though Diego hadn't said a word, his gaze bouncing from the light fixture to the paper roses blossoming on the wall, "it's not like we have the supplies we'd need. We might not even be let off leash before—"

"We lie to everyone else, Klaus. Not each other." 

"That's not...it's not a lie. We really don't have what we need."

"B-but we could get it. Wh-what we need. That's not wh-why you don't want to have sex wi-with me."

Klaus' chest rose on a deep inhale. "I...I don't think it's a good idea. That's all."

Diego held still, tried to figure out how the fuck he was supposed to breathe when his ribs had turned into whip-thin lashes, into coarse ropes, biting into his lungs. He looked down at his scarred hands on Klaus' slim hips, let go. "W-we sh-should get back."

"I didn't mean...Diego." Klaus snagged Diego's wrist, used his stubborn strength to pull Diego’s hand away from the doorknob. Awkwardly shuffling around so they were face to face again, he said, "I want to. I want to do everything with you, but—"

"You won't fuck me," Diego bit out, "because it's not a good idea." He jerked his head towards the door. "I'll head back first, tell them—"

"I don't want you to feel what I feel in the mausoleum. I can’t risk that.”

It had been said in this low, quiet voice, and through Klaus’ teeth on his lip. Diego couldn’t help it: he leaned in, close enough to feel the fan of Klaus’ breath. “What?“

“If you had no choice but to experience even a _second_ of a punishment I brought on myself, Diego," Klaus shook his head, couldn't seem to stop once he'd started, "how could I ever—Why would you even want to look at me?"

“I deliberately provoked dad into doing this," Diego tapped his cheek beneath the bruise, "I've brought plenty of pain down on myself—"

"That's different."

"How?"

Klaus shrugged. "It just is."

The bathroom’s marble floor was cream and honeycomb, the shades Klaus' skin warmed to when they were holed up in a closet and he pulled a lighter out of his pocket, flicked it into flame with his thumb, careful not to torch Mom's linens. From the first minute they'd both stepped foot in the bathroom, on that smooth floor, started talking about—Klaus' face had paled. Their siblings would buy that he'd been sick. It was only ever Ben, anyway, who doubted. Who looked beyond the shakes Klaus put on; who checked for things like dilated pupils, track marks, alcohol soaked into Klaus’ collar. 

When he didn't find those things, Ben kept that secret like it was his own.

Going for the doorknob again, Diego said, “Ben covered for us.” It would take another precious minute, but—“Does he know? Does Ben know we’re—”

“I wouldn’t trust your well-being with anyone, Diego.” Klaus lifted a hand that strayed close but didn’t touch. “Not even Ben.”

Diego took a long and unsteady drag on stale air and released it quick. He moved into Klaus, his space, found bitten lips with a soft kiss. “I want all of that with you. Everything the paper said was possible,” he murmured. “And this decision, it’s not just yours to make, baby.”

In his periphery, Diego saw Klaus’ mouth open, stall on his response. Diego used that slip of time to slide out into the hall. He took the stairs up to his room two at one go, grabbed the harness looped over the back of a chair, shrugged it on and left off his Academy-standard blazer. An excuse was only good if it was seen as truth, if it borrowed from habit or pattern, and outside of mealtimes Diego was rarely without a blade. 

Luck was on his side: Klaus was back at the table when Diego reentered the room, and Reginald was nowhere in sight.

Food was scarce, even Diego’s plate had been raided, but Klaus still had his toast. He stared at those twin triangles like he had to solve their equation, cutting his finger back and forth along the crust’s corner angle. His eyes shifted to something on Diego’s other side and his body followed, right arm reaching, going for the jar of fig jam. Klaus would eat the stuff by the spoonful, eyes closed and humming around the taste of it on his tongue, while Diego would only ever go near it with his teeth, scraping it off Klaus’ fingers, or his lips.

The jar secured, Klaus held his position in front of Diego for the split second it took him to whisper, “Okay.”

Diego’s breath hitched, the sound masked as the jam was uncovered, the tension on the lid letting go with a sharp pop. He knew the smile he turned on Klaus was small, small because it shook. Knew if he tried to speak, the words would come out similarly stuttered, but—

“Aren’t you finished yet, Number Four?” Reginald asked from the doorway, adjusting his monocle, the tie Diego would turn into a noose. “If you insist on lingering, so be it, you will…”

Listening as their father clipped out a ridiculous list of chores for Klaus to complete, as he paired Allison with Ben, him with Luther, leaving Vanya to fend for herself, Diego risked reaching under the table for Klaus' hand. He drew out that skin on skin contact as long as he could, until Luther stood and snapped, “C’mon.”

* * *

"You being so quiet is making Luther twitch."

Klaus looked up from the cracked sidewalk, saw that Luther and Ben had pulled ahead, that Ben's backpack was misshapen, the fabric straining to contain all of the library books crammed inside. With his hand stowed in his pocket, the material stretched as badly as Ben's bag to accommodate Klaus' hand around the box of condoms he'd stolen, Klaus nudged his elbow into the bend of Diego's.

Even after swallowing convulsively, he heard his voice like it was another rock ground against the pavement beneath the tires of a passing car. "Put a bug in his ear, then. Have him tell daddy dearest that forcing me to be practically silent for three days sucks for everyone.”

He’d realized shortly after what should have been dinnertime on the second day that, since the previous morning, he hadn’t seen his siblings—hadn’t seen Diego—for more than three, _possibly_ five minutes, and that had only been in passing. No time to safely slip anyone a note, never mind have a fucking conversation. It was almost a relief when he was condemned to spend the third day in the mausoleum, thought he might take advantage of any one of those cobwebbed hours to relearn how to use his surely atrophying vocal cords, only the cemetery’s most recently deceased wouldn’t let Klaus say boo.

Caught in a loop of movement, she ran her hands up and down her inner thighs, swathed in blood, to hold them up like an empty cradle. The pitch of her prayers rose and fell like a winter wind storm until the door was unbolted and Klaus ran for cover. 

Before that, and after, actually, when he wasn’t pouring himself over various floors, inching across marble and wood with a scrap of cloth and a bottle of odd-smelling, urine-colored cleaner, he was zoned out over a pile of forks and spoons and fountain pens, polish stuck wax-like to his fingers. Or he was dragging around a vacuum plucked out of the fifties, wrestling with the thing’s stupid goddamned hose, fighting with the retractable cord that—no matter what Klaus did, or how hard he kicked it—would not retract. Or he was dusting and sneezing and seriously contemplating making Reginald choke on the tawny feathers.

Exhausted, he’d fallen asleep on top of the blanket and sheets covering his bed. Still wearing his uniform and shoes.

His dreams—cockblockers, every single one of them—hadn’t even let him near Diego.

Sidestepping a woman walking two standard poodles, Luther to one side of the pooches and Ben to the other, their brothers were far enough ahead. Klaus didn’t need to whisper, but learned habits were only easy to break when not doing so might cost him Diego. “Do you think it’s the same with other soulmates?” 

Diego did it, too, gauged the distance between them and their siblings. “I’m not inside your head yet, baby, I’m gonna need a little more than that if you’re actually looking for an answer.”

“Not talking to you was every flavor of awful." Klaus peered across the street, gripped the condom box until it buckled. "But I kept looking at my hands. Kept thinking about how the only thing I wanted to do was touch you. And what was I doing instead? Polishing shit no one uses. Covering my ears while a dead woman wailed at me." 

Slipping his left hand into that pocket, curling his fingers around the small bottle of lube there, Klaus admitted, "It was stupid, Diego, so stupid, but for the last three days I honestly thought I was wearing my skin wrong. I thought...I don't know what. I just knew it wasn't going to change until you touched me." He shrugged, and laughed, and, Christ, he didn't mean for it to sound so hollow. "Probably all that, it's just me, right?"

Diego was quiet for so long, Klaus started to count street lights and street signs. To run his anxious gaze up those poles.

"Why do you do that?"

"What? What'd I—"

"The others, I expect it from them, but you—"

Klaus stopped walking, caught Diego's sleeve. "What are you talking about?"

"Why'd you change your m-mind, huh?" Klaus watched Diego work to loosen his jaw. To force his stutter back. "If you doubt me like that, think I don't give a shit about being near you, or that those same three days were some kind of picnic for me, why—"

"That's not what I meant," Klaus said, and the repetition, the number of times he'd dragged that phrase out around Diego, carved a pit into his stomach. "And I changed my mind because I realized I was being an asshole. That I—"

"You two," Luther yelled back at them, his scowl as delightful as the dog shit smeared over the curb, "stop arguing and hurry up. We were supposed to be home ten minutes ago."

His eyes never straying from Klaus', Diego flipped Luther off. 

"It's not just you. Never has been," he said. "It was like that for me even before your name was written on my skin. But now?" 

Diego took a step closer, one that could've been read as a threat or a warning. Luther, still dutifully glaring at them, probably saw it that way. And why not? Diego was among the last of them to break beneath Reggie's heel, sure, but when he did, even their father recognized the mistake he'd made. All those exquisitely sharp edges Diego was left with, he never bothered to sheath them. Luther didn't know—couldn't know—that Diego would turn those piercing points on himself before he'd let one so much as scrape Klaus. 

"I was going out of my mind without you." Diego didn't try to hide or play off the tremble caught in the depth of his voice. "Reggie stopped me from sparring with Luther, thought I was going to permanently damage his precious Number One, I was going so hard. Too bad I couldn't tell our brother it was dad I was thinking about. That he was lucky I went at him with my fists. Because given the chance, I would've carved some kind of mark in our father, a different one for every hour you were kept away from me."

Klaus softly groaned. Shifted to adjust the insubstantial cover of his ridiculous schoolboy shorts. "Which closet are we losing our virginity in?" 

"Yeah, that's not happening. I want to spread you out, baby, make you—Take one more step, Luther." Diego turned his head, leveled a cutting glare on their brother, who had enough good sense, at least, to pull up short several feet away. "If you're so worried about Pogo skinning it, what are you waiting for, get your ass back to the house."

Luther ignored that. "Klaus, was he threat—"

"You know how it is with Number Two, big guy. If he's breathing, someone, somewhere, should probably pull on chain mail, maybe think about ducking behind a shield wall. A filing cabinet would do in a pinch.” Klaus hadn't given it much consideration before, but right then he focused on the vicious bruise swallowing Luther's right eye whole, and said, "Those shades of blue are just lovely on you. With a little masc—"

"Fine," Luther bit out, "have it your way, but I'm not covering for you."

"No one's asking you to."

Klaus flickered three fingers in a wave. "Toodles."

As Luther stalked off, retracing his steps to Ben, the breeze that had been gathering across the morning hours shifted, fingered through a few loose curls at Klaus' temple. Diego watched, and it looked like it cost him something to leave those strands alone, his hand reflexively lifting, clenching when he remembered where they were, who was around.

"Later," Klaus quietly promised him. “For now, let’s tiptoe back to where we were before our brother attempted to save me from your dangerous clutches. I seem to recall you had me spread out beneath you and were about to...what, Diego?”

Diego's feral smile shaped slowly. "Later," he echoed back. "I've got a place picked out for us." 

With obvious reluctance, Diego resumed walking, seemingly unaware of the gaggle of girls approaching them on the sidewalk, three sets of eyes fastened to a different feature: his thickly-lashed brown eyes, those wet dream lips, the placket of Diego's shorts. The one with the dick-measuring stare glanced up and over at Klaus, slanted her head, silently asking him to confirm or deny. 

Klaus grinned, nodded.

"I can take it out next time," Diego said, "if you really wanna—"

"Go down on you in public? Honestly, I'm not opposed."

Fevered color crept along Diego's cheekbones. "I'd be willing to return the favor."

Klaus' thoughts blanked at that, reformed seconds later around an image of spring-green grass flattened by Klaus' shoes and Diego's knees; of long, callused fingers tugging on the button, the zipper, of Klaus' shorts; of Diego's lower lip, slick with spit, glossy with pre—“ _Shit_ ," Klaus yelped, narrowly swerving around a faux-antique lamp pole. "You were going to let me walk into that?"

"I would've kissed your boo-boos better, baby."

“Lucky for you, I know that’s true," Klaus said, his tone underpinned by the memory of every splint and bandage Diego had applied to injuries Klaus brought to him instead of Mom. And, yeah, kisses, too, when they were on the short side of seven years old and Diego realized a little peck worked the miracle of drying up Klaus' tears.

With the mansion's frosted-glass doors looming, Klaus brushed against Diego's side. "Once more unto the breach?"

Pogo stepped out of a shadow to meet them in the middle of the foyer. "Master Klaus," he said, "Master Diego, your father has left instructions for the remainder of your afternoon. Once dinner has concluded, however, Grace has requested your assistance."

“With what?”

“Whatever is required, I assume.” Pogo braced both hands on the curve of his cane, recited from memory the list of tasks Reggie saw fit to shackle them to. It was more of the same for Klaus and so he tuned out until Pogo said, "Master Klaus, you'll find the necessary supplies in the Lodge. Master Diego, you'll come with me now."

Diego lowered his voice, left Klaus with one word like a kiss, "Later."

Dragging his feet, touring familiar hallways as though they were foreign tourist attractions, Klaus finally wandered into the Lodge, where elk and moose antlers stabbed the air above the fireplace. There were so many sets of them, one staggered over another, they nearly reached the ceiling. Short of suddenly gaining the ability to levitate, there was no way Klaus was getting anywhere near those things with a cloth or the duster.

He shrugged, looking around for a starting place, and idly picked up a bottle of pine-perfumed cleaner.

It was mind-numbing, the monotony of spraying and wiping, moving from one grotesque trophy to the next, from a table made entirely of big game bone to the hard shell of an armadillo that stared back at Klaus with eyes glinting with life, playing back Klaus' every move. Unnerved, shoving it on the mantle, Klaus thanked whichever deity or fate had intervened, spared him from also being followed by phantom animals of the four-legged variety.

Eventually, deciding he'd cleaned enough of the grim menagerie to blind Pogo to the rest, Klaus draped himself across one of the room's oversized leather wing-backs, fell into a state of drift, flickering in and out of odd dreams until the door opened on hinges he was supposed to have silenced with...he wasn't sure what, but there were several other bottles and tins at his disposal, ignored until that moment.

"You missed dinner."

Klaus popped up on the seat, twisted to look over the horizon line drawn by its backrest to find Ben framed by the mahogany doorway and using his thumb as a bookmark. "How long?"

"I checked a couple of other rooms first, so," Ben said, "about thirty minutes."

Scrambling, leaving the cloth where it fell on the floor after slipping off his lap, Klaus wove around sofas and lamps and squeezed past Ben, reaching out as he did so to skim his thanks over his brother's fine-boned wrist. 

Possibly he crashed into the second floor landing's wood-paneled wall, careening down the stairs. And he might have been ever so slightly panting when he spilled into the kitchen slash game room, but that was okay, it didn't fucking matter, not when Diego's dark eyes met his and immediately raked lower—checking for evidence of the mausoleum, probably, and coming away from the search without a trace of dirt. 

Diego's chest lifted on a breath as deep as the relief etched into his expression, his mouth opening, but Mom beat him to the conversational punch.

"Klaus, dear, there's a plate here for you."

"Oh, I’m n—No this is great, thanks, Mom." 

His hunger pangs weren't the kind to be satiated by the perfectly plump chicken breast surrounded on the plate by peas and potatoes whipped into clouds—food had never been a priority, his other appetites running too deep, strengthened every time Diego's hips pinned him to the laundry room floor, by the humid give and take of Diego's mouth—but because he knew it would make the other two occupants of the room happy, Klaus picked at the meal.

Picked at it, and looked through his lashes at the one thing—the only person—capable of satisfying Klaus' every craving. His gaze starved, he watched iridescent soap suds slip down from Diego's fingers to gather like pearls around his wrist before popping.

 _God_ , Klaus would watch Diego do just that—rinse and repeat, skin soaked, coated in white soap—for hours and hours, or until he ran out of dirty dishes.

Diego was glad to do it, Klaus knew, had always been content to settle in and help Mom regardless of the task. And they really did make an efficient team, with Diego washing, stacking, and Mom drying. She hummed, and he leaned into the sound, let the sweet melody hold him in a way he only allowed himself to be held when the others weren't around. 

If Klaus got up, approached them, the scene would split like a smoke-wisp. He wasn't willing to do that right then, to be the reason for Diego's ease dispersing, and so Klaus ate more than he'd intended to, chasing the food with lukewarm tea he was ninety-two percent positive hadn't been made for him.

"I can't believe you're still eating."

Klaus lifted a shoulder and gave in, finally, carrying his plate and utensils to the sink. He tried to nudge Diego out of the way, but Diego wasn't having it, and he managed to clean everything faster than Klaus would have anyway.

Finished, setting down a wetly gleaming fork, Diego asked, "What else you got for us, Mom?"

"An evening to yourselves, my darlings."

"Um?"

"Huh?"

Mom's deep red smile defied Reggie's programming. "You've both worked so hard lately, and you've seen so little of each other. Was I wrong to—"

"What," Klaus shook and shook his head, "no. No. You? Wrong? You are as wise as Athena, Mom, as—"

"This isn't going to get you in trouble, is it?" Diego asked. "With—"

"Your father isn't here right now." Mom picked up the fork, swaddled it in the dish towel. "Run along, boys. Make the most of your uninterrupted time.”

Diego hesitated—and Klaus thought he knew why, was himself half-listening for a dull thud, evidence of the other shoe dropping—but he responded to the spread of Klaus’ fingers on his back, turning his head. Like they had before, searching eyes roamed feature by feature over Klaus’ face. “You ready?”

Had they been alone, Klaus would have answered silently, with Diego’s bottom lip between his teeth. He would’ve drawn out a single syllable with his tongue. But they weren’t, not yet. “Yes.”

They left Mom in the kitchen, walking side by side, the backs of their hands meeting and parting, over and over. They passed empty rooms they’d never thought to use, kept going. Moving through air that seemed to thicken and hold still like a breath. Klaus didn’t ask, and he wasn’t surprised, exactly, when Diego led him into the basement. But when he saw what Diego had done—“How?” Klaus asked, staring wide-eyed at white sheets suspended on unseen strings, draped like a concealing canopy. “When?”

“The last three days,” Diego said, “I came down whenever I could.” He pulled back one side, several layers of gauzy sheets, to reveal a paper-thin mattress beneath a loose nest of soft blankets. Pillows spilled across their makeshift bed like sunset, pale pink and creamy orange and—“Most of this, it was already here, I just— _Mmm_.“

Klaus swallowed that, the startled pleasure in Diego’s deep-throated hum, leaning into the kiss he’d initiated as though Diego might pull away from it, make Klaus chase after more, after longer. He nipped and licked, and pressed a palm to Diego’s chest, felt the beat beneath quicken, felt it skip when Klaus breathed, “You are _everything_. If I’ve ever made you doubt that, Diego, I—”

“I…I still want it to happen. Want our bond to be one of those rare ones,” Diego said, drawing his thumb up Klaus’ cheekbone, shifting his wrist to sift four fingers through Klaus’ hair. “Want you to know what you do to me, no question.”

“Fuck. Okay. That’s—Can we—“ Klaus lifted his chin, indicated the sanctuary Diego carved out of the basement’s throwaway chaos. For him, for _them_. 

Diego stepped back to let Klaus slip inside and followed close behind. The sheets fell into place, and Diego turned to face Klaus on his knees. A shuffle of matches sounded before one scraped the side of its box, before the flame caught and flickered, and Diego leaned around Klaus to feed it to twin wicks, two small and scentless candles.

His hands noticeably shaking, Klaus emptied his pockets of the condoms and lube. Put them within easy reach. “How do—“

“We can—“ 

Klaus smiled. “What were you going to say?”

“Just that we can take this slow.”

“What if I don’t want to? Or, no, that’s not wh—“ Klaus bit his tongue before he could say it, again. He lifted a hand—still shaking, _Jesus_ , he needed to get that under control—and skipped a finger down the buttons on Diego’s shirt. “The…when we…when you first push inside me—“

Diego’s breath caught on that—on those words, the form they must’ve taken in his thoughts—but when it let go, that same breath left his lips as something else. As a ragged groan, as deep as his eyes were dark.

“That’s when we should go slow. Not before, not…now.” On his second pass over them, Klaus somehow managed to slip button after button free. Diego undid the cuffs and rolled his shoulders, made it possible for Klaus to strip off the shirt. “My hands, they’re—Help me? It’ll take too long if I try to do it.”

“I will.” A tug on his cotton tank lifted it out from the waistband of Diego’s shorts. The grin he flashed at Klaus was unfair, a knockout punch. “But I want a kiss first.”

Somewhere in there, in the scorching soft middle of that kiss, Diego got his hands on Klaus’ button-up. Pushed it off shoulders that stupidly started to tremble beneath the air’s warm bite and the drift of Diego’s mouth. Klaus closed his eyes like that might make all of his shaking easier to ignore, and reached for Diego’s belt, the button on his shorts, the zipper.

Pulling back from the kiss and from Klaus, Diego shoved down his shorts. The sight of his black boxer briefs catching on the hard curve of his cock made Klaus fumble his own attempt to simultaneously peel off shorts and briefs, almost had him choking on a dry swallow. “Fuck, Diego, you’re—“

As dangerous and vital as a heartbeat, that was his Diego. He was heat and movement, nothing at all like a cold, static museum piece. But looking at him, at every exposed inch of burnished skin—smooth where there were no scars, the muscles beneath firm and tight—Klaus thought of marble in the hands of a master, in the hands of someone who understood angles and lines and used that knowledge to create a gorgeous, unreal thing worthy of being displayed in some gallery with a sign that read _Do Not Touch_.

Which was all well and good except _fuck that_. Klaus brought Diego kiss-close with a hand on his nape. “It’s later. Spread me out already.”

Diego's throat worked, his Adam's apple stuttering. When several seconds passed and he had nothing—no sound, not a word—to show for his effort, long black lashes fell to shield the frustrated emotion holding him suddenly, painfully still. And that—Leaning in, tucking his head beneath Diego's chin, Klaus pinned kiss after kiss to Diego's silenced throat. Drawing his lips up to Diego's mutely parted mouth, he murmured softly, "Pretty soon we're not going to need to say anything out loud." 

There was no smooth way to accomplish it—laying back, stretching out—but the awkward awareness twisting in the pit of his stomach vanished as soon as Klaus glanced up at Diego, kneeling between his thighs, his expression like worship: hushed, reverent. The first time Diego had looked at him like that, Klaus had lost his breath like a flame blown out—it was just gone. His lungs had seized around nothing, and then Diego kissed him. Shared his air. And what felt like a dream—Klaus didn’t have to worry about waking up, about losing the sensation of Diego beneath his hands, because—somehow—it was his reality. 

With his head propped up on the corner of a pillow, Klaus traced the soul mark on Diego’s chest. “Ready?”

Swallowing, holding onto his silence, Diego nodded. He lowered his head for a deep kiss, smoothing a hand up Klaus' thigh. Before those long fingers reached their intended dick-stroking position, Klaus circled Diego's wrist.

"I can't...Until we can..." Klaus took a shallow breath, and like the rest of him, it shook. "I don't want to do this without your voice."

The candles continued to burn, the light they threw retracting, expanding, swaying on the sheets, while Klaus watched the residual stutter-induced shame clear from Diego’s eyes. "I d-didn't th-think—" A brush against Klaus’ arm, Diego underlining his own name. "I didn't think I'd be th-this—"

"You're nervous too? Oh, thank Christ," Klaus said, and held up his hand, wracked by lame little tremors. "I can't stop it. Keep thinking I must look so stupid—"

"You're so fucking beautiful, I c-can't picture the w-words, can only see you."

“ _I'm_ so—Honest to god, Diego, I compared you to a master sculptor's best and most important work a minute ago."

Diego responded with a small smile and a blush that manifested in sweet strips of faint color across both cheekbones. That barely-there pink deepened, became a stunning, seeping crimson as he used one hand to brace himself above Klaus and slowly pushed the other up the length of Klaus' hard-on, applying too-slight pressure with the hollowed curve of his palm, the heel of that hand.

“ _Diego_."

Loosely curling around Klaus’ dick, long fingers eased down, formed a firm and briefly twisting ring around the base before stroking back up. Diego paused to thumb the slit, slicking his skin and Klaus’ with a dripping bead of precome, and then, then he hastened his pace, if not the tightness of his hand, and— _shit, fuck_ —it wasn’t possible to—Klaus couldn’t help but lift his hips, push into Diego’s relentless rhythm.

“I can keep doing this,” Diego’s grip firmed, punctuating his half-formed sentence, “but I want to…”

Blinking open his eyes—when had he closed them?—Klaus distracted himself from the pleasure sparking along his spine with his half-bitten nails, scratching Diego’s thigh, leaving white lines like he’d already come on Diego’s skin. “What?” Before Diego could answer, Klaus said, “ _Anything_. You know you can do anything.”

Diego snagged a kiss, his hand slowing, easing off of Klaus’ cock. “I’m gonna remind you you said that.” The bottle of lube uncovered, Diego coated three fingertips. “You gotta tell me, baby, if I’m hurting you. Okay?”

Klaus nodded, widened the spread of his legs. “Okay.”

A cool lick of one finger, a pass over tight skin. The first tentative press in was—“Talk to me,” Klaus heard his voice as a shiver, the hand reaching for Diego’s free one shaking as bad, “please.”

“About what?“

Klaus tried for a deep breath, tried to relax—he’d read that was important, even if right then it seemed like the last thing he was capable of doing—as Diego patiently pushed that first finger inside, placating the resisting ring of muscle by taking his time. “It…it doesn’t matter.”

“I had this dream once,” Diego said, his tone low and soothing, like some kind of sinful lullaby, “about a house by the water, the ocean, built up above all these rocks.” His finger in nearly to the second knuckle, Diego kept going, slowly sliding deeper. Deeper. Klaus held as still as he could, as he ever was, latched on to Diego’s voice. “It was ours. One floor, a few rooms, those lights you like strung up everywhere. There was a leash hanging near the door, so I guess we finally got a dog.”

“You…you always wanted one.” Klaus lifted his head to find Diego’s lowered, watching what he was doing, his long finger easing in and pulling out. Imagining what that must look like, those muscles Diego was making submit to him fluttered and clenched. When he rasped, “ _More_ ,” Klaus wasn’t even sure what he was asking for: another piece of the dream or a second finger.

Diego gave him both. “I might’ve been a cop. That, or we get into some interesting shit in the future.”

Breathing through the insistent stretch, two callused fingers carefully working him open, Klaus managed a smile. “Handcuffs?” He thought to give his dick—or Diego’s—a distracting stroke, then it clicked, what Diego said. “The future?”

“Yeah. That’s what it felt like I was looking at.” Diego glanced up. “W-would you want that, baby?”

Klaus clumsily pushed up on his elbows to kiss that ridiculous question off Diego’s full lips and, in the process, sank down on three freshly lubed fingers. “O-oops,” he panted, “gimme a…fuck…a minute.” 

Over the span of a few hasty heartbeats, Klaus pictured that house by the water, imagined stripping Diego out of his uniform, piece by piece, in front of a window looking out on moon-lapped waves. His body had crossed the threshold of accepting the slight discomfort, the expanded pressure, when Diego crooked his middle finger—just a little, just enough to stroke a spot inside. Klaus’ cock jerked, throbbed against his stomach. His nerve-endings lit up, pulsed like a current, like he was on the crest of coming, and—He cracked one eye open to look at Diego. “You’re good at this. Why are you good at this?”

Diego’s lips twitched as he did it again, that thing with his finger that sliced off a bit of heaven, brought it down to basement level. “You want me to suck at it?”

“Yes,” Klaus huffed. Then: “No.” 

“Wanted it to be good for you,” Diego said, and shrugged, “so I fingered myself a couple—“

The obscene noise Klaus let out echoed off cotton walls. He dropped back into the cocoon of plush blankets and pillows and brought Diego down with him. Blitzing Diego’s throat and face with open-mouthed kisses, Klaus scraped silent words into fever-hot skin. Bore down on the fingers inside him with restless hips. “I wanna watch you do that,” he breathed, “someday.” He slid a hand between them, curved it around Diego’s cock. “Inside me, Diego. I want all of you inside me. _Now_.”

Quickly, Diego tore open the condom box, got one out, got it on, and slicked his dick with more lube than was probably strictly necessary.

Klaus realized it had stopped, his shaking, only after it began again. He reached for Diego, needing his weight, needing the dark of his eyes, the salt of his sweat and his scent, the vows and promises in his kiss. “We’re doing this,” Klaus said, quietly, in something like wonder, because they’d been waiting, and wanting, and because a small and scared part of him had thought they’d have to wait and want even longer, until they were older and on their own under another roof. All the times they’d gotten each other off, though, talking about having sex—Klaus pressed his thighs tight to Diego’s hips, took a shuddering breath when he felt the tip of Diego’s dick at his entrance. “We’re gonna come so fucking fast, you know that, right?”

Diego’s crooked smile was the single most spectacular thing Klaus had ever seen. “Yeah, but then we’ll do it again,” he dipped his head down for a kiss, “and again,” and slowly, so slowly, pushed into Klaus, his thumb in constant, trembling motion over Klaus’ soul mark, “until— _Fuck_ , baby, you feel…I need to—”

“It’s okay.” Klaus rocked his hips, eased Diego’s cock in deeper, as deep as he could, and felt a delicious inch-by-inch drag as Diego pulled back, almost out, before steadily burying himself inside again. Klaus couldn’t remember doing it, wasn’t sure when their hands had tangled together on the pillow above his head, but he still had one free to trail down Diego’s back, five fingers to knead into Diego’s firm ass, urging him on. “Need you to not stop doing that,” he murmured against Diego’s mouth. “The whole full in, full out thing.”

“Yeah?” Diego angled his hips, thrust in faster. A little harder. Bottomed out. “You like that?”

Klaus laughed—it was all breath, soft as the waking end of a dream—and did what he could to clench receptive muscles around Diego’s dick. It worked, too, going by the guttural groan that poured into their sanctuary. The way Diego’s hips jerked, attempting to deepen each thrust, to get impossibly closer.

“You’ve been inside me— _oh_ —for more than a minute and we’re still going.” Klaus grinned, giddy with an unfurling pleasure that felt different, more substantial, than anything he’d ever gotten his hands on. And that was before Diego shifted, enclosed Klaus’ cock in warm fingers, pumped the length of it. “I’m s-so proud of us.”

“Whenever it h-happens, it’s gonna be you first, baby.” 

Diego rolled his hips, hit that sweet, sweet spot that tumbled Klaus towards the edge of orgasm.

“Holy fucking Christ.” Klaus’ back arched, his head tipping to one side to expose his throat to teeth and tongue, his soulmate’s feral kisses. “I’m starting to…to think,” he ground his hips down, greedy for every inch of Diego, every pulse of pure, intense sensation, “I’m the only virgin in this room.”

“You know I…I’ve only been with you.” Diego’s voice was a rasp, rough with an emotion they'd tried to find a word or three for and couldn't, which was, Klaus had always thought, a shocking failure of language. That was probably why they'd spent years coming up with their own. A lexicon based on bandages, late night knocks on bedroom walls, hands held beneath the table, consuming kisses in cramped closets, all the lies their bodies told to shield each other, to protect their bond. 

Klaus squeezed Diego's fingers, that same emotion swelling to fill his chest, rising to his eyes for Diego to read. And he did, Klaus saw how Diego clung to it, his pace picking up to match his quickened breathing and the increasingly incoherent strokes over Klaus' cock. 

Closing the distance between his mouth and Klaus' ear, Diego thrust in hard and deep and said, "We're not virgins, not anymore.”

Klaus turned his head to find Diego's lips with his own, to share some of the air their joined bodies displaced, and thought, No, they weren't. No matter what happened when their—in two days, this, their first time, it couldn't be taken away from them. They wouldn't be found out, separated, before they had the chance to be together. Klaus would always know what Diego felt like inside him. Would never forget what his gorgeous face looked like above him, the indecent things ecstasy did to the already decadent shape of Diego's mouth.

"I—" 

Whatever he’d meant to somehow choke out, Klaus lost it to a hitched moan when Diego's cock caught on that spot and stroked over it, and over it, all of Klaus' senses suddenly saturated in _too much, not enough_. And it was like he knew—Klaus wondered for one dazed, delirious moment if Diego could already read his mind—because Diego firmed his grip on Klaus' dick, rolled his wrist, and something in Klaus' core must've shattered to let in so much euphoria, a high no drug could touch.

“ _Diego_." Klaus looked up from the opal strands of semen coating Diego's fingers and pooling on his own stomach, fastened his hazy gaze onto the dark eyes watching him, holding him close. "Diego."

"S-so beautiful, Klaus, you're so—" Diego's arms shook, his pace faltering, urgency driving him off rhythm. “ _Fuck_ , baby, I'm—" Dropping his forehead to the cradling curve between Klaus' neck and shoulder, muffling a low moan, Diego's hips jerked before they slowed. Stilled. His breath on Klaus' humid skin was as warm as the come at the condom's tip, a layer of latex so thin, Klaus had forgotten it was there. “D-didn’t want to s-stop. I w-want t-to—"

Klaus hummed, completely and utterly content, and refused to let Diego pull out. "Do it again?"

Nodding, pressing satiated kisses to every scrap of skin he could reach, Diego eventually shifted his weight off of Klaus. Ran unsteady fingers through the sweat-streaked hair sticking to Klaus' temple. "That was—"

"Fucking incredible." Klaus propped himself up on his left side, and with one fingertip, languidly traced his name on Diego's chest. "Addicting. God, who needs booze or pills when there's you? When your soulmate is some kind of sex prodigy, I mean, Christ, Diego, you're amazing. I want to ride you next time, okay, and do we really need condoms, because—"

"Slow down, baby," Diego said, smiling, trapping Klaus' hand beneath his. "How long do you think it'll take?"

"To get hard—"

"Before we know.”

“Oh. That.” The newspaper’s tidy type hadn’t gone into helpful detail, Klaus remembered. Had really only laid out tantalizing lines they couldn’t verify or question, not when Reginald’s face flushed an apoplectic red at just the use of the word, the mere mention of soulmates; and adding injury to insult, not when the books he aimed at their disobedient mouths had nothing to do with the subject. Klaus had checked, once, after he’d regained consciousness. “It’s not like we can consummate our bond any more than we just did, so I guess we wait, keep our fingers and toes crossed?”

Diego drew circles, wove infinity, between Klaus’ knuckles. For a while he was quiet, staring at their shadows on the cloth wall. “I stashed some stuff beneath the mattress to clean up with,” he said, finally. “After, you wanna head up first or—“

“I want to stay here, with you, all night.”

“Me too, baby, but you know that can’t happen. Not until we’re gone.”

Klaus scooted even closer. “So let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”

“What, like right now?”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t and naked at that.”

Diego’s next exhale resolved into a light laugh. “You really want to run?”

Klaus draped himself across Diego’s chest, heedless of the dried come on his stomach that cracked and pulled on the fine hairs there like that little bit of vanilla frosting he always, inevitably missed, that Diego sometimes found for him and sucked off his finger until it shone. "I didn't answer you before, about the house, the dog, the handcuffs, but you know, don't you? That I'd follow you anywhere. I'd do anything with you. If we have to live out of a dumpster, I don't care, Diego, as long as you're—"

Cut off by a deep, drowning kiss, Klaus sighed into Diego's arms, the only wholly safe space he’d ever known, and felt something pleased as a purr gather behind his ribs, the sound rubbing against his throat, padding onto Diego's tongue.

"Let's do it," Diego whispered. "We'll get our shit together tomorrow, go the next day."

* * *

_Diego_.

Half-awake, smile spreading slowly, lazily, Diego kept his eyes closed as he rocked his hips, rucking up the sheet beneath him. Starched wrinkles scratched at an uncovered strip of skin across his back, somewhat tender where Klaus' ragged nails had dug in and scored their mark. The sting was brief, Diego hardly felt it, wasn't aware of much beyond Klaus' cool hand wrapped around his dick. Those slim fingers firmed and fell, rose to the head and stroked back down, started in on a familiar rhythm that dowsed Diego in waves of rippling, building pleasure.

 _God, baby_ , he thought, lifting his hips, clutching the blanket, _don't stop_.

Klaus' hand stilled. _Diego?_

The question mark tacked onto the end of his name had Diego blinking open his eyes, asking, "Who els—Klaus?" Pushed up on his elbows, looking over his empty bedroom, Diego quickly dropped his narrowing glare to the sweats he wasn’t supposed to wear, uncomfortably stretched over his untouched hard-on. "What the—"

The light knock on his door proved a pointless gesture: Klaus didn't give Diego the minute it would've taken to sort himself out, free his legs from the tangle he'd made of his sheets and blanket. Hurrying into the room, Klaus shut the door, his back only just connecting with the nicked and knife-notched wood before he shoved a hand inside his pajama pants, palmed his erection and squeezed.

Which one of them groaned the loudest was up for debate.

"Did...You felt that?"

Diego licked his lips. "Do it again." From the bed, he watched the impression of Klaus' knuckle poke a pinstripe on his pants, knew he thumbed the slit of his cock, because that's where Diego felt a teasing line of pressure against his own. "Holy shit."

He'd wanted it to happen, wanted it so bad, and—

"It did. It happened." Klaus' smile was brighter than the sunlight sitting on Diego's things: the crap he had stashed flush to the walls, stacked on shelves, stuff he'd leave behind in a heartbeat. "Of course it did." A glance at the door, his head tipped towards the hallway, listening, and then Klaus was across the room, had both knees on the mattress, straddling Diego's thighs. "We're going to have so much fun with this, Diego."

Gazing up at luminous green eyes, running both palms up Klaus' thighs to hold his hips, Diego pushed aside the nagging thought that he had to get Klaus out, back to his own room, before—

_Please don't make me go, not yet._

"I don't want to, but Pogo's gonna be—" Diego realized what he'd done, what they'd both been doing, and sighed. "We gotta watch that."

"Watch what?"

"Answering whatever we say in our heads out loud."

Klaus' weight shifted as he straightened. With Diego's shirt clenched in one hand he pulled until Diego was upright, until Klaus was sitting snug in his lap. "What's one more thing added to the list? And besides, we'll be out of here soon," he said. "Unless..."

_He changed his mind._

"I—" Diego shut his mouth quickly, deliberately. _We're going, baby. Tomorrow._ "We still have to figure this out. How it works."

Absorbed by the creases spiking towards Diego's collar, the folds his grip had forced the fabric to accept, Klaus seemed miles away, buried in some deep pocket of his head that was, for the time being at least, inaccessible to Diego. "For the next five minutes can we just—"

A hesitant knock on the door was followed by Ben’s sleep-warm voice, garbled by a yawn, ”Diego? Have you seen Klaus?” 

_Shit_ , Klaus’ tone vibrated with startled energy, _there’s got to be something here_ —“More of me than he probably wants to." His lip worried between twin canines, Klaus glanced around. His gaze snagged on the blade Diego had left beside a sharpening stone on a nearby nightstand-high pile of books. He went for it, and with an apology in his eyes that echoed in Diego's head— _Sorry, I'm sorry_ —sliced open the pad of his thumb. 

He didn’t even know what he was reacting to—the bubbles of blood welling up on Klaus' skin or the lancing phantom pain playing out on his own—but Diego grit his teeth, forced a hiss to let go of its hold on his throat.

Too quick to be graceful about it, Klaus scrambled off of Diego's lap, stumbled on his way to throw the door back. He thrust his hand out, missing Ben's chin by an inch, and pouted. "Diego's hoarding the bandages again."

Ben very carefully did not look at Klaus' lacerated thumb. "Did you try the first aid kit in the kitchen?”

“The Monopoly box was empty.”

Feet on the floor, pushing the blade Klaus had used out of sight beneath the bed with his heel, Diego stood. “Luther thought he was being cute, put it all in the Operation box. Got a weak ass laugh out of Allison when he told her.” He moved to stand behind Klaus. “If we’re done here,” he said, and lightly shoved Klaus across the threshold, “I’ve got more important shit to do than find a bandage to cover your carelessness.”

 _Liar. I expect this boo-boo to be thoroughly kissed later._ Klaus winked at him, Diego caught the flicker of his long lashes before swinging the door shut in his and Ben’s faces. _But since you brought up doing things, when are you going to do me again, soulmate mine?_

Diego smirked, stroking his dick back to full, aching hardness. From a couple of feet or so down the hallway he heard a moan splice into a yelp after Klaus must’ve fumbled a step, connected with the wall. _Think I could get you off right now, baby, if I keep doing this, keep touching myself. Ben might notice, but—_

_Make me come in front of our brother and I’ll…_

Diego paused with precome smeared on his palm. _What?_

Seconds as heavy as concentration passed with no answer. Unsettled minutes spread between him and Klaus like the goosebumps steadily going for higher ground on his forearms. Rather than decide if he should push, maybe interrupt Ben, disrupt whatever Klaus was hyper-focused on, Diego gave up on jacking himself off, went looking for the duffle he’d take with them when they left. Found it bunched up beneath a thick coat that smelled like winter, like Klaus. 

Diego wasted another minute trying to find it—the memory that revealed Klaus zipped into the thing—but it wasn’t there. _Baby?_ he tried. _When did you wear my coat?_

Something in Diego’s head bent around the question like an absent frown, one he could picture easily enough, because he’d seen Klaus put it on around their siblings a hundred times. Usually when a spirit was spitting at him, demanding his attention while someone else was talking, but also when Luther droned on and fucking on about responsibilities, the importance of listening to dad. Or whenever Allison bitched at Klaus for permanently borrowing her eyeliner.

When it finally formed, Klaus’ voice was tentative. _Diego, we’re not the only—_

Diego waited for more, for something. 

Suddenly swamped by a sense of confusion that wasn’t his, that Diego was positive had nothing to do with the black woolen sweater he couldn’t remember tossing in his bag, he took a swift step back from the bed as that itchy feeling funneled quickly into alarm. Fractured into a screaming bombardment of thoughts he couldn’t separate for shit, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how many times he shouted down whatever line connected them, _Klaus, what is it? What’s going on, baby?_

Pain as bright and hot as an entire city block succumbing to fire flared at the back of Diego’s head, knocked a harsh exhale past his teeth, air spitting out of his mouth alongside a bruising, “Fuck,” and then…nothing.

A depthless black void where Klaus’ presence had so completely filled Diego moments before.

Lunging for his harness, his knives, Diego yanked open the door. Cut out into the hallway and ran, bare feet hitting the cold, blood-flecked floor like consistent gunfire, so damn loud he figured somebody had to hear it, except none of his siblings cracked their door. 

He tore down the stairs and into the kitchen, his heart pounding out a panicked beat. For a split second Diego let something else pierce him, fear like fangs, and then he shoved it aside to reach for his training. To assess the room, from the turned-over chair with one busted leg, splintered like it had been broken over muscle and bone, to the medical supplies scattered on the rug around the flattened bottom half of the Operation box. 

Diego went down on his haunches, picked up the unopened bandage stained at one corner with Klaus' bloody fingerprint. He saw what had to be Ben's sleep shirt, ripped from collar to hem, discarded by the door that opened onto the street. 

Rising, set on heading that way, Diego snarled and turned, primed to throw one of his blades until he saw who it was, who'd come into the room on high heels. "Mom?" The knife hastily sheathed, Diego rushed over to her with the bloodied, unused bandage crushed in the hand he used to indicate the violent mess behind him. "Klaus, Ben, they—"

"Were taken by men your father hired to bring Ben to Lyon." Manicured fingers briefly disappeared between folds in the skirt Mom wore. The pair of keys she took from that pocket swayed like chimes but, dulled by overuse, they did it without making a sound. Between one second and the next, the keys were in his hand, brass teeth gnawing on his palm. "I did what I could," Mom said, and there was honest emotion there, Diego would swear he heard it loud and clear, "but you have to go now."

Diego shook his head, implacable. "I'm not going anywhere until I find—"

"Klaus will be in the mausoleum, dear." Mom moved to the table, took up a pen and began to write on a paper napkin. "One of those keys is for the car your father keeps in the alleyway, the other will open the cemetery gates."

She held out the napkin. Diego glanced at the blue ballpoint ink, at what looked like a set of directions, before he took it. "Mom, what the fuck is go—"

"Language, my darling." It was a reflex, an outdated maternal strand threaded into her programming. Diego took a deep breath instead of snapping over something he knew she was conditioned to say. He had no ground to stand on anyway, not when he also gave into habit, his own instinctive reaction, by leaning into her touch, the feminine hand as pale as Klaus' that cupped his jaw. "Do not come back here, Diego."

He had no intention of ever stepping foot in the house again, but—"Why? What does dad want with Ben?"

A cool thumb, synthetic skin, smoothed over Diego's cheek. The gesture was so familiar, nothing new, it shouldn't have made his throat thicken with something that scratched like he'd swallowed dry sand. But he'd made the mistake of closing his eyes, of going back to the very first time she'd done that—gently held his face after his stutter had paralyzed him—shortly after Reginald determined to correct his son's weakness with water, ten minutes held under for every word Diego's mouth mangled.

For years it went on, the time he had to hold his breath increasing instead of shrinking along with the number of words Diego failed to produce whole. But Mom, she remained his constant. Was always there with a towel and a soft, encouraging smile that was a perfect match for the one he saw in front of him right then.

"Go up and pack a few things for you and your brother. Be quick, Diego, dear. I’ll prepare Pogo's breakfast and bring it to his rooms, do you understand?"

"Yeah, but—"

"You'll want to be there when Klaus returns to consciousness. After what he saw, what he now knows, he's going to need you." Her skirt shushed against his sweats as she stepped around him to see to breakfast. Assembling a recipe of powdered boxes and butter, milk and eggs, she hummed like she always did, just a few soft notes before she told him goodbye, before she said, “Make a home someplace far away from here, dearest, and always take care of each other."

Diego nodded, "Bye, M-mom," and backed out of the kitchen.

Sprinting up to his room, quickly changing into his only pair of jeans and a shirt he usually wore as added insurance against his soul mark showing through their uniform's thin white button-up, Diego shoved random clothes in the bag with his coat. In Klaus' room, he rooted around in the closet and bureau, packed whatever he thought Klaus might've picked out for himself, was surprised but glad to find some cash tucked in the pocket of a pleated skirt Klaus had swiped from Allison. 

Halfway down the stairs Diego remembered Klaus hadn't been wearing shoes, went back for a pair.

Tall blockades of brick on either side held the sun back from the alleyway. A dumpster ripened in the day’s rising heat, caution tape drooling from its flung-open mouth. Approaching the car parked in front of it, Diego remembered thinking once that Reginald had done it on purpose, picked a battered car in the same shade of dark green as the dumpster, like that somehow camouflaged it, hid it from his exit-seeking kids.

A few short steps away from their gifted exit plan, the void in his head flooded with marrow-deep terror. A strangled scream deafened him to every other thought. He stumbled, hearing it, would have found the pavement with his knees if he hadn’t slapped a hand on the car’s dented trunk.

 _Klaus?_ The duffel tossed on the backseat, Diego jammed the key home, turned over the ignition. _Baby, you hearing me?_ A right turn onto the street, following the grid of directions printed on the napkin, Diego thanked a god he wasn’t positive he believed in for those few month’s worth of grocery runs Mom had used to teach him how to drive. _I know where you are, okay._ Klaus’ acknowledgement of Diego’s voice in his head had all of the strength of a lame bird trying out its injured wing. _I’m gonna get you out._ His foot heavy on the pedal, the old car coughed, accelerated. _Almost there, baby._

For two minutes straight, Klaus was a hoarse litany of _No_ , of _Not now, not now, leave me alone_ , tripping over the vowels in _Please_. 

Against the black steering wheel, Diego’s knuckles were frost-white. He pushed the speed limit and his luck, and caught the curb with a tire, parking in front of the cemetery’s iron gate. His hand held by impatience, the key scraped through a bit of rust on the lock, but then he was in and darting between headstones, his boot heels gouging divots into dirt and grass recently abused by shovels.

The mausoleum was imposing gray granite. It was a chorus of imagined voices coming down from the statuary perched on top, coldly peering at him as he popped the padlock, shoved the bolt back. He tripped on something in the dim and didn’t give a fuck, felt his way over to the shrunken shadow pinned to the ground in one corner, to Klaus.

“Baby? Baby, I’ve got you.” Diego unfolded Klaus gently, undoing the circle his arms made around his knees, peeling his knees away from his chest, lifting Klaus’ head with both hands. Tears tracked through the grime on Klaus’ cheeks and chin, around lips pitted with teeth marks, a swollen red. “Open your eyes.”  _Look at me._  “Tell me what you need.” 

_You._ Brimming green eyes opened. Klaus repeated, "You."

Diego raked up dirt or dust as he sat and spread his legs, made his body an open space Klaus could crawl into, tried to turn himself into a sanctuary like the one they'd left behind in the basement. When Klaus was settled against his chest, ear pressed to pulse, Diego found his soulmate's slim hand and lifted it to his mouth, kissed the bloodstained slit bisecting Klaus' thumb. "We're out. We're never going back there."

Klaus shuddered and held Diego tighter. "Ben's soul mark was on his stomach."

Time stretched to the length of the crypt before Diego was ready to ask, "Whose name?"

"Five's." Klaus' mouth was open to continue, his breath frostbite on Diego's neck, but his teeth clicked shut when he flinched, and then he groaned. Whispered, "Fuck off already."

"Come on. We're getting out of here."

Diego got Klaus up on his feet, ten toes dressed in dirt and chipped nail polish, and got him out of the mausoleum. In the hand holding his, he felt the tension propelling Klaus down the paved path carved through closed and open plots, between willows and potted plants. Diego didn't ask how many ghosts were on their heels, just walked faster.

By the curb, Klaus looked between their ride and Diego. "Stealing is my thing."

"It was a gift," Diego held up the keys, "from Mom."

“I think she might be the reason I was in there," Klaus said, tipping his head towards the cemetery, "instead of on a plane with Ben."

Starting the car to fill it with heat, hoping it'd chase a bit of the chill from Klaus' skin, Diego put his back to the door. He shoved up the armrest to retake Klaus' hand. "You good to tell me what happened, or—"

"I...I suspected? Not that Five—That Ben had a soulmate. He'd say things, you know, that made me think—" Klaus swallowed. "I never let him tell me, Diego, because I..."

"You thought he was fishing? Or that he’d figured it out. That he knew about us."

Klaus nodded, slipped a fingertip between Diego's knuckles, rubbed it back and forth over the sliver of scar there. "His power has been messed up since Five disappeared, did you know that?"

"Dad hasn't paired us up much the last couple of years," Diego said, "and Ben, he never sought me out like he does you."

"You were mine," Klaus said, like that explained the distance Ben kept, and Diego realized that maybe it did. Ben and Five were thick as thieves as kids, swapping books, building a bridge between them out of complex conversations Diego never attempted to cross. Maybe Ben had watched Diego and Klaus staunch enough of their wounds with shared laughter to understand he was just as likely to slip on the blood in that sound. "All this time you've been hiding your poetry from me? Shame on you, Diego, soulmates are supposed to share everything, honestly, tsk tsk."

Diego glanced up from their joined hands. He would've kissed Klaus' small, softly shining smile if he didn't like the way it looked on his lips so much, especially after—"Wait," he said, "what poetry?"

A tap to Diego's temple, "In here," and then Klaus sobered. "Dad doesn't appreciate it when one of his weapons misfires. Ben thinks—thought—Reggie might've put two and two together, Five going missing and Ben's powers pretty much vanishing at the same time, and came up with soulmate."

"Turns out he wasn't wrong."

Heat continued to wheeze out of the vents. They both listened to it for a little while, until Klaus slapped the dash and the noise cut out. "We can't help him," he said, quietly, "can we."

Diego cleared his throat, found he didn't actually want to confirm out loud what Klaus already knew: they didn't have the money, or the information they'd need, had no idea what they'd be walking into, or if their combined abilities would be enough to see them through it. _I'm sorry, baby._

"In that case, I hope I never see Ben again. Or…At least not for a very, very long time.” Shifting to reach for the duffel with his free hand, Klaus pulled the bag onto his lap. "So if we're not stowing away on a flight to France," he asked, "what are we going to do? I might know of a few dumpsters on the market at a fair price."

"We're going to hit up a gas station so I can fill the tank," Diego said and checked his mirrors, his own free hand on the wheel, steering the car back onto the street, "and you're going to see about getting us a map."

"We're doing this, huh?"

Slanting a sideways look at Klaus, remembering the last time his soulmate said those exact words, Diego grinned and said, "Yeah, yeah, we are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my very first (unapologetically self-indulgent) soulmate au; I hope you enjoyed it! Please do let me know if you did.
> 
> The title of the fic is borrowed from Lyon Hart's "Half Light."


End file.
